


the cowboy song

by fated_addiction



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This ain't about history. Shane is not a good man. (Post TS-19)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the cowboy song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wovenindelibly (sparklebitca)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklebitca/gifts).



**the cowboy song**

The trailer catches a flat just miles outside of Savannah. The day’s ending too; the sun’s cast halfway into the back, sinking into reds and grays without leaving the heat. Shane stays in the truck, watching the others in his mirror. His ears are ringing. It takes a fucking while, Rick and Glenn and Dale standing around, watching the front end like it was something completely and utterly foreign.

“The fuck,” he mutters, and it’s Rick that finally breaks away, passing Lori as she comes out of the trailer, heading to him. There are dark circles under his eyes. Shane still smells the smoke.

“Gotta stay here tonight,” Rick says.

Shane shrugs. He makes a fist over his gun and watches Lori in the mirror again. She’s squinting, mouth twisted into a frown.

“Then we’ll figure it out,” Rick says too, and it’s ironic, all this bullshit hopefulness; it was easier, Shane wants to say, when you weren’t here. But this ain’t his space anymore, and it’s the sort of thing that Shane has left up to killed or be killed, a bigger stranger to what Rick’s still buying about everything that’s left.

It’s like this, you see.

 

-

 

They were boys once, and back in high school, way _back_ in high school, Shane’s daddy used to leave tabletop beers around the coffee table and in the garage by that old truck, telling his mama, “boys are supposed to be goddamn _boys_.” That was before she went and shot him in the head, self-defense at the end of the day. It was still blood on the carpet, still Shane signing right up to be a cop because it's real easy getting brain matter out of a perfectly good uniform - Shane loved his mama.

There was Rick though, and Shane, Shane, _god_ , in that truck, the two of them listening to a couple of records, old records, singing about girls and freedom and cigarettes, having way too much whiskey and leaning a little too close to him. It was never about comfort.

Shane remembers too: slick mouth, hot mouth, and it was all too damn simple for Rick’s hand to fist through his hair and like a couple of boys, it was really just about jerking each other off right where anybody could hear the two of them.

He liked that taste.

 

-

 

Shane stands at the top of the trailer, staring away from the fire and into the road; the gun’s heavy over his shoulder and he’s trying not to listen Lori as she laughs, half-broken, half-real, and Carl whispering animatedly to both her and whoever the hell is left. Kid's real lucky; he don't understand a damn thing.

Somewhere to the side, there’s still Rick and T-Dog talking about the way they can make the next tire to last just past Savannah, just so they can rest and figure everything the fuck out. He sighs loudly, just listening to them, and wanting to tell them it’s just bullshit, fucking bullshit that they’re all still believing in something – humanity fucked the hell up.

“You haven’t said a word.”

Dale joins him at the roof. His hand looks boney against a shotgun too and it’s suddenly real apparent that it might even turn into a thing about age. Shane tries not to think about it. Bullets are real spare as it is.

“It’s all bullshit,” he says quietly. “We were doin’ fine up there, you know, and maybe, okay, shit, it wasn’t going to be permanent but all of you went started believing in that salvation.”

“He’s a good man,” Dale tells him, and they both watch Rick. Lori comes to join them, Carl sleepily attached to her side.

“The very _best_ ,” he mutters.

Dale sighs. “You just haven’t been the same, son.”

And it’s a strange, strange thing being called son by a man that he barely knows, with a name that got a penchant for a dead daddy bastard and memories that are no longer his. Everybody knows that in the back of his mind, it’s all soft curves, hips, and mighty fine pussy that only happens when wife so and so ain’t happy. There's little left that he can remember, the way he was _rick_ and it was okay 'cause her mouth was all too soft to be just as firm as boy in the back of some pickup truck.

So Shane keeps it simple: “It’s complicated,” he says.

 

-

 

There is no real way to mourn the dead. It ain’t ‘til later, when Shane’s all piss pour with the last of the whiskey, some good shit, that he keeps hidden with his share of the guns, that Rick comes and finds him.

“Hiding?” he asks, and from the roof of the trailer, Shane can only shrug and roll his eyes. He thinks about taste again: I fucked your wife, asshole. Turned her around and buried her in the grass, like a favor. And he can imagine, you know, Rick’s face, all indignant and hopeless. It’s just like Dale said: Rick’s a fucking good one.

“What the fuck is there to hide from?” Shane asks, and then laughs.

The sound is hard and Rick winces, shuffling in the dirt. He looks away from Shane, back out into the road. It looks endless, either way, and the white dashes aren’t much for boarders anymore; just outside of Atlanta, it became all about the dead and the bones.

“I don’t know,” Rick says. “I don’t know. You’re so far away, I guess. I can tell what everybody’s thinkin', but you, you’re just like the memories I still have from back in the hospital.”

Shane snorts. “You’re an asshole,” he mutters. The liar of the best kind, he thinks.

Rick looks back up at him, and there’s that smile, that faint, faint smile, the kind of smile that he usually got, somewhere simple like the car or back, way back when they were nothing but a bunch of sticky kids. It makes Shane tense. His mouth is dry and swings his tongue out, rolling it against his lips. His throat tightens too.

“I’m trying real hard,” Rick says. “I know it’s real beyond that right about now, but I am. You gotta know that.”

“So I hear.” Shane pauses. He grabs the whiskey bottle – it’s from somewhere behind him, or already in his hand; it doesn’t matter anyway, but he still thrusts it forward, over Rick. “Want some?”

“Nah.”

“Sure?”

“Real sure,” Rick says. He nods into the trailer and Shane remembers Lori. Will she tell him, that’s the question now.

But Rick’s stepping back too, hands into his pocket, looking older and younger and nothing like a man should when he knows that there’s just a real pressing need for something beyond his own mortality. There’s no room for dreamers here, and they are no longer boys, good boys, playful boys.

Who survives now?

 

-

 

Lori finds the whiskey bottle in the morning. Shane’s by his truck, hung over and his eyes heavy in the sunlight. Tree's still look pretty mid-morning, too green to be something less than appreciated.

“This yours?” she calls, knowing full well that it is, and that a few steps back, closer to the trailer as if to prove a point. He gets it, Shane wants to say. He _fucking_ -

“Nah,” he lies.

Rick’s the one that likes his whiskey.


End file.
